1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an external flexible bay system for a personal computer and more particularly to an external flexible bay system which includes an external flexible bay adapted to receive either a modular battery pack or a modular disk drive to facilitate use of such devices with a portable personal computer.
2. Description of the Prior Art
External input/output (I/O) devices are shown, such as external disk drives and battery packs, for personal computers (PC) . Such external I/O devices are not modular. Accordingly, if several external I/O devices are to be used with a PC, individual external I/O devices are required and connected to available ports on the PC. Oftentimes, due to the availability of ports on the PC, the number of external I/O devices that can be connected to the PC are limited. For example, oftentimes portable PC's, when used in a desktop mode, are connected to an external printer. As such, use of an external I/O device, such as an external disk drive, may require the printer to be disconnected. When the printer is required, the external floppy drive is disconnected and the printer reconnected, which can be cumbersome.
In addition, with portable PC's, it is often desired to have a spare, fully charged battery pack for extended portable operation. In such an application it is necessary to either disconnect the battery charger from the PC to charge the spare battery pack, thus preventing the battery pack within the portable PC from being charged or to purchase an additional battery charger, which increases the cost to the end user.